Field of the Technology
The present disclosure describes an RFID-enabled medical item storage, organization, and/or tracking device, such as a cabinet or shelf, that includes a limited-range wireless network communication capability, such as low-energy Bluetooth or Zigbee, to communicate with nearby cabinets, shelves or mobile devices, any of which may serve as a communication aggregator to coordinate the communication of multiple cabinets, shelves and other devices with an inventory management system or other back-end computer system or other device via back haul wireless or wired networks (e.g., the Internet).
Background of the Technology
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems have been used to track medical item supplies in hospitals and through the medical item supply chain. Such systems typically involve one or more readers and many RFID tags, each of which is associated with (e.g., attached to) items being monitored or tracked. In the case of pharmaceuticals, single-use medical devices, and implantable medical devices, RFID tags are typically affixed to or made part of the item's packaging or container. An advantage of RFID tags is that they are stand-off readable (i.e., readable at a distance without a requirement for contact or a direct line of sight path between the reader and the tag).
RFID tags take the form of integrated circuits, with associated antennas, that have computer readable memory encoded with unique serial numbers. RFID tags typically can be encoded with other information in addition to unique serial numbers either at the time of manufacture or thereafter by writing data to a writeable or re-writable computer readable memory of the RFID tag. The reader includes or is connected to an antenna used to generate a carrier signal that energizes the RFID tag antenna when the RFID tag is within the electromagnetic field generated by the reader's antenna. The energized RFID tag generates a data signal that is transmitted by the tag's antenna and received by the RFID reader's antenna. The reader and/or its associated antenna can be in a fixed location or may be mobile, such as carried by an operator. For example, RFID readers are often placed at multiple, distributed locations associated within a supply chain in order to monitor the items as they pass through manufacturing, transportation, distribution, storage, to consumption. Each reader captures the RFID tag serial numbers of each item as it enters the reader's interrogation field, and data collected from all readers facilitates item tracking over time, through and within the supply chain.
Medical item cabinets may be equipped with one or more RFID readers to interrogate and read the contents of the RFID tags associated with the items stored in or near the cabinet to monitor or track the tagged items. Such cabinets typically include a computer (i.e., central processing unit (CPU)) that processes and/or stores information read from the RFID tags and serves as the communication hub for the cabinet. These cabinets are typically connected via a primary communication channel to the Internet or other communications network (i.e., the “cloud”) using a wired or Wi-Fi network adapter connected to the cabinet's computer. This primary communication channel is used to communicate information between the cabinet and remotely located servers or other computer systems, such as an inventory management system, for several purposes, including to:                (1) send information read from medical item tags (i.e., bar code or RFID tags) from the cabinet to the cloud during or after a cabinet inventory read cycle;        (2) modify cabinet settings, such as the frequency of inventory read cycles;        (3) update software or firmware on the cabinet remotely; and        (4) send diagnostic commands to assess problems and obtain diagnostic information and logs.        
From time-to-time, a problem may occur in which the symptom is a communication failure between the cabinet and the remote servers. This can happen due to several possible reasons, including:                (i) the cabinet's computer or network adapter has failed;        (ii) the cabinet has lost power (e.g., the cabinet has been unplugged from a wall outlet); or        (iii) the cabinet has been disconnected from the network by, for example, a wired communication cable has been unplugged, the cabinet has moved out of range of a wireless network, or unintended changes have been made to the settings of the hospital network or the cabinet's computer or network adapter.        
When a cabinet fails to communicate with the cloud, remote tracking of the medical items stored by the cabinet is delayed at least until communication can be reestablished. On occasion it is necessary for a service technician to travel to the location of the cabinet to diagnose and resolve the issue, which can cause significant delay and associated costs. Furthermore, this gap in communication can result in inventory shortages and increased risk of inventory loss due to diversion or theft. It is desirable to reduce the frequency and duration of communication failures between medical item storage cabinets and the cloud in order to provide more accurate and timely remote inventory monitoring and tracking.